A Dream Business: Asylum Seekers

Although Great Britain is an island, the British borders are as full of holes as Swiss cheese. Thousands of illegal immigrants cross the Channel into Great Britain every year – the British authorities are apparently unable to remedy this.

The reason: Asylum is a lucrative business. Landlords, housing associations and welfare associations make a fortune from accommodating and caring for “refugees” because the state covers almost all of the costs. The fact that the country cannot cope with the mass influx does not bother the profiteers, and neither does the state care about the consequences.

The situation is no different in many countries in the EU. Private companies that provide care and accommodation for immigrants are also raking in record profits. Clearsprings, a private company based in Essex that operates and contracts accommodation for asylum seekers on behalf of the government, was able to increase its profits by 60 percent to 119 million pounds (141 million euros) in the last financial year.

The company attributes the profitable development to the “political and economic upheavals in many countries” that have led to an increase in asylum applications. As a result, demand for accommodation for asylum seekers – including emergency accommodation such as hotels – remains at a consistently high level, it said in a statement.

However, the new Labour government sees a need for clarification. It has now announced that it wants to review the contracts with Clearsprings. Party circles say that they are “shocked” by the huge outflow of money. This is because the contracts were signed by the Tories, who formed the government until the last general election in July.

Back in 2019, the Conservatives had already reorganized the allocation of asylum accommodation and awarded ten-year contracts to three large companies: Serco, Mears and Clearsprings.

The total volume is 4.6 billion pounds (5.4 billion euros). Clearsprings alone has been able to increase its profits 300-fold since 2019 – the asylum accommodation business is now the company’s most important business.

But profits have also increased because the “business value” of asylum seekers has skyrocketed in recent years – from 17,000 pounds per head per year (20,196 euros) in the 2019/20 financial year to a whopping 41,000 pounds (48,708 euros).

The think tank Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which is close to the Labour Party, urgently advises rethinking the “outsourcing” of refugee care. Whether Labour is able to change course remains to be seen, however.

The costs that flow to Clearsprings and the rest of them are horrendous. And ultimately the taxpayer is fleeced.

Not Stemming the Tide

There are sadly other serious loopholes. British law actually provides for an entry ban for people who have committed serious crimes. Despite this, hundreds of convicted criminals from Eastern Europe have been able to enter Great Britain in recent years, the Telegraph has now reported.

The criminals exploited weaknesses in the British visa system that allowed them to enter the country despite the current regulations. The only requirement for a visa to be successfully issued is that the applicants themselves confirm that they have not committed any serious crimes.

According to the Telegraph, a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request to the British law enforcement agency ACRO revealed that over the past three years, checks on Romanian citizens have revealed more than 700 cases in which the suspects had previous convictions for murder, manslaughter, rape or child abuse.

In total, ACRO checks on arrested foreign nationals over the past three years have led to 317,757 inspections of the criminal records of their respective countries of origin.

A single sample of five nationalities revealed 524 cases in which the suspect had been convicted of murder or manslaughter abroad. In addition, 441 cases of rape and 592 cases of child abuse were reported. The countries of origin with the most convictions were Romania, Lithuania and Poland.

British politicians have voiced dissatisfaction with the gaps in the immigration system. Former British Home Secretary Chris Philp has called on the government to consider whether the new Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA) system, due to come into force next year, could also be used as the basis for more stringent criminal background checks.

“I would support that,” Philp said, stressing: “It is vital that foreign nationals who have committed serious crimes here or elsewhere are quickly returned to their countries of origin. We cannot have known foreign criminals walking our streets.”

The future ETA system will require travellers to provide biographical and biometric data, contact information and answer questions about their travel plans. This data will be automatically checked against British watch lists and criminal records databases.

However, this system is also largely self-reported and targeted suspicions are required to trigger a criminal background check by ACRO.